There Will Be Light
by unicornesque
Summary: "They were a strange couple, the boy and girl who moved in next door." Enjolras and Éponine make it through the revolution, and now they have to live with the consequences and each other. She wonders how he survived the war, while he wonders how to survive her cooking. He's angry because his destiny's been changed, and she's angry because he doesn't know how to be anymore.
1. Part One

**Notes: **I was going to post this as a one-shot, but, merde, it turned out really long, so I've decided to split it. I'm not done writing the second part yet, because I'd like some input on the tone and premise, but rest assured that I'll be updating as soon as possible. The quotes in bold are all from_ Deathless_ by Catherynne M. Valente. And as for the main setting, Provence is really near and dear to my heart, but if I've made any mistakes, it's because I'm not a native, and I apologize in advance. I also have some other stories on my Tumblr, which you can read at ( youarethesentinels . tumblr . c*m / tagged / you-are-my-revolution ). Now, on to the fic! Corrections, suggestions, and constructive criticism would be very much appreciated.

* * *

** Part One**

* * *

**I.**

**Let the truth be told: There is no virtue anywhere. Life is sly and unscrupulous, a blackguard, wolfish, severe. In service to itself, it will commit any offense. So, too, is Death possessed of infinite strategies and a gaunt nature- but also mercy, also grace and tenderness. In his own country, Death can be kind.**

"_How did you survive the war?"_

"_I don't know. I think I ran."_

* * *

Old man Candeveau thought they were a strange couple, the boy and girl who moved in next door. They were both skinny things, although the girl looked like she'd been starving for much longer. She had thick black hair and a pair of dark eyes too big for her face, and a furtive manner that made it seem like she was ready to disappear at any second.

The boy was tall and handsome, obviously bourgeois, if not outright aristocracy. He moved with a certain careful grace even though his right arm was slung in a cast. He had high cheekbones and an aquiline nose, but these sharp features were softened by the locks of golden hair perpetually falling into his blue eyes.

They arrived by carriage one sun-soaked morning in the last week of June, with only three valises between them. Candeveau was tending to his garden when he saw them coming up the path, beyond the white picket fence that separated his property from theirs.

"Good morning!" he cheerfully called out over the deep purple asters and bright yellow Spanish Brooms.

The girl shrank back. The boy frowned. They didn't spare Candeveau another glance as they continued walking to their front door.

"Let me hold one of those," Candeveau heard the girl say when they passed by him, gesturing to the two valises in the boy's uninjured hand. "You're going to drop one any second." She had a coarse and raspy voice, all rude inflections and snappishness.

"I am not an invalid," the boy tersely replied. In contrast to hers, his drawl was cultured, his pitch smooth.

"Silly me, I didn't realize that sling was only a fashion statement-"

The rest of the argument was lost when the door shut firmly behind them. Candeveau packed up his shears and brought the news of the new arrivals to the rest of his household, which, now that the children had all grown up and left, included only one other person.

"What brings them here?" Candeveau's wife asked him while she was churning the butter. "Did they elope?"

"I don't think so," Candeveau replied. "I saw wedding bands."

His wife sniffed. "They're criminals."

"My dear, let's not jump to conclusions!" cried the old man.

"If it's not a forbidden love affair, then they're hiding from the law," Madame Candeveau retorted. "Why else would they come to Provence? Nothing ever happens here."

* * *

The house was small and rather drafty. Its purchase had been arranged by Enjolras' family's secretary as a secret favor for the prodigal son, and there had been no opportunity to ascertain the presence of a fireplace or, for that matter, another bed.

"No wonder the old owner gave this place up so cheap," griped Éponine.

Surprise momentarily flickered across Enjolras' pale face, as if he were perturbed that a street rat could have a roof over her head and still find something to complain about.

_I used to be an innkeeper's daughter, _she wanted to say._ I know about penny shaving, milking the cow for all it's worth, all the little tricks. _And she would tell him that, if she thought he cared, but he didn't care about anything these days and she was tired of putting herself out there for people who never gave anything back. Near-death experiences made you not want to waste time.

She busied herself with unpacking the valises and putting their clothes into the wardrobe. He had been considerate enough to buy her a few dresses at their last stop; they were crude and inexpensive garments, but it had been so long since she'd had new clothes, so she ran her hands over the skirts and sleeves, savoring the texture of the clean material and the uneven pattern of the stitches. She folded his shirts and coats with less care, trying to shut out the scent that wafted from them, that combination of linen and soap that she'd come to associate with him these past few weeks.

When she was done, she closed the wardrobe with a flourish and turned back to face him. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, stiffly holding his broken arm close to his body, his glass-blue eyes roaming over the bare walls and the bare floors. He looked so much like a confused little boy in that moment that her heart gave a twinge.

"Welcome to your new world, Enjolras."

He glared at her. She almost apologized, because she hadn't meant to say it out loud, but Éponine Thénardier always finished what she started, and so she glared back.

* * *

**II.**

**A marriage is a private thing. It has its own wild laws, and secret histories, and savage acts, and what passes between married people is incomprehensible to outsiders. We look terrible to you, and severe, and you see our blood flying, but what we carry between us is hard-won, and we made it just as we wished it to be, just the color, just the shape.**

"_How did you survive the war?"_

"_It's amazing how big the space of a few centimeters can be."_

* * *

To satisfy her own curiosity, Madame Candeveau brought over a pot of lamb daube and a fresh-baked loaf of fougasse. The girl, who introduced herself as Éponine, received these gifts with enthusiasm, dipping great hunks of bread into the stew and cramming them into her little mouth with such speed that Madame Candeveau had to restrain the motherly instinct to admonish her for not chewing properly. The girl wore a wedding ring on her finger, and you didn't go around telling married women how to eat.

The boy, who called himself Enjolras, was more fastidious, all sparing sips and small bites, his left hand quivering only slightly as it brought spoonfuls of stew and pieces of bread to his lips. He had the table manners of a gentleman, while his wife gobbled food down like a heathen.

They really _were _a strange couple.

"Whatever happened to your arm, Monsieur?" asked Madame Candeveau, gesturing to the sling.

The boy and the girl exchanged looks across the table.

"Factory accident," he said.

"Riding accident," she said at the same time.

They scowled at each other in annoyance.

Madame Candeveau blinked. She was losing the plot more often in her old age. "Well, which is it, dears?"

Enjolras' brow creased, but Éponine's back relaxed against her chair. "He fell off his horse on the way to the factory," she replied, licking stew from her fingers.

"What a rotten stroke of luck," tutted Madame Candeveau. "And I take it you came here to recuperate?"

"That is correct, Madame," answered the boy.

"We might stay longer, though," Éponine chimed in. "I love it here already. It's so much cleaner than Paris!"

"Oh, _are_ you from Paris?" The old woman shuddered. "Nasty business, that uprising."

Enjolras set his spoon down. "Nasty business," he echoed in a dull monotone. "Yes."

"Those poor, misguided schoolboys," continued Madame Candeveau. "I have sons their age. How could they have thought it was worth it?"

"They died for nothing," Enjolras agreed.

"I wouldn't say _nothing." _Éponine seemed to be chewing more viciously than before. "They died because they believed, so-"

"So, nothing," the boy finished for her.

Quick as a flash, she changed from irritated to hostile. "How convenient of you to think that _now!" _she snapped.

Sensing the beginning of an argument, Madame Candeveau excused herself from the table and slipped out the door, leaving them to it. Given their ages, they couldn't have been married for long, and it was natural for a young couple to bicker in the early days. She resolved, with the benevolence of someone who was an old hand at the game, to give Éponine words of consolation and advice the next time they spoke.

* * *

After their neighbor left, Enjolras braced himself, expecting Éponine to whirl upon him in righteous indignation. When she didn't immediately speak up, he assumed she was merely summoning all the anger in her sinews.

Instead, she mopped up the last of the daube with the last of the fougasse and raised an eyebrow at him. "A factory accident?" She managed to sound incredulous even through a mouthful of bread and stew. "No one will believe that. I mean, _look _at you, Enjolras!"

_My father owns a factory, _he thought. _He used to take me with him whenever he visited it. He was grooming me to head the business one day, but I became more interested in the plight of the workers. _He could tell her all of that, but the memories would only pull him under. Back then, he had been so confident, so full of hope…

His breath hitched as phantom pain blossomed on his arms and his spine. Blood and bullets, glass and splinters, bolted doors and windows slamming shut-

"I am going for a walk," he announced abruptly.

She burped in response.

* * *

_The rain is in his eyes, so at first she is silver-stained and wraith-like, and he thinks he's seeing a ghost. She turns to run, but he grabs hold of her arm and pulls her beneath the awning of a nearby tavern. Her skin is cold and wet, solid to the touch. He can only stare at her in disbelief._

"_You're alive," he says dumbly._

"_Let go of me," she hisses. "Monsieur, please, I can't be seen with you! The gendarmerie is on the hunt, they're out for your blood."_

"_I saw you die!" He raises his voice, and she glances around the street in panic before she stops struggling, obviously not wanting to call attention to their little scene. "I saw you die," he repeats, more softly this time. "You were the first to fall-"_

"_I'm good at getting up," she mutters. Half of her face is cast in shadow by the tavern lights; the other half is spiked with the glint of raindrops. She looks at him through hooded eyes. "And, apparently, so are you."_

* * *

**III.**

**You were so near death that ghosts crowded around you, weeping silver tears, waiting for you with such smiles. You humans, you know, whoever built you sewed irony into your sinews.**

"_How did you survive the war?"_

"_They let me live, because that was the worst possible thing they could do to me."_

* * *

By the time Enjolras returned from his walk, Éponine had already failed at cleaning the floors, dropped a plate, and spent a good five minutes sneezing after she tried to dust under the bed. Leaning against the open doorway, he registered the overturned mop and the shards of porcelain with a nonplussed expression, while she gingerly hid the broken whisk broom behind the folds of her skirt.

"I'm not much for housekeeping," she admitted.

"So I see," he evenly replied. "Unfortunately, Mademoiselle, neither am I."

"Stop calling me that. I'm supposed to be your wife, remember?"

"I apologize." He pushed himself away from the door and walked over to her, grabbing the mop by the handle and returning it to its proper place with his uninjured hand. "Not all of us are well-versed in the art of deceit."

_Well-versed in the art of deceit? _she silently repeated to herself. _Who _says _things like that? _

Well, Enjolras, of course. The marble statue who didn't have time for women but never met a big word he didn't like, the revolutionary who had charged into the jaws of hell but was somehow spat back out, friendless and laden with guilt, formerly the figurehead of the student societies, currently the most wanted man in all of Paris.

Her fake husband.

As he helped her clean up, she couldn't resist glancing from her wedding band to his. Before leaving the city, they'd bought the rings from a seedy shop owner Éponine knew, because an unmarried boy and girl living together would cause uproar in a small rural village. In the time before, Enjolras wouldn't have cared, would have scoffed at these outdated moral codes, but this was the new world, and he was done fighting against the system.

* * *

"_You have to get out of here," she tells him, her voice spreading through the raindrops like vapor, her hair shrouded in pearly mist. "It won't be long before they catch you. They're angry, Monsieur. They won't show you mercy."_

"_Perhaps that is for the best," he says. "Perhaps I will find Patria in the gallows."_

"_You don't _understand," _she snaps. "The gallows would be the mercy. You're headed for the chain gang."_

_His hand falls away from her arm and she takes the opportunity to flee, as the girl named Éponine always will, bursting into his life like the crack of thunder and leaving again just as quickly. He watches her slim form disappear into the storm and the night, into the dark streets who embrace her as if she was their child._

* * *

He found a job as a clerk for one of the local vineyards. She started working at the village bookshop. The old couple next door habitually sent over vegetables and dairy, and Madame Candeveau took it upon herself to teach Éponine how to cook. Enjolras was the unwilling subject of these experiments, stifling a grimace as he choked down rock-hard socca and overly mushy ratatouille, keeping his opinions to himself under the weight of Éponine's large, hopeful eyes.

"Your family isn't too far from here, right?" she asked him one night as they got ready for bed.

He nodded. He had debated using an alias, but Enjolrases were a dime a dozen in the southern regions, and the bourgeois timbre of his name had all but guaranteed him the position at the vineyard.

"You should visit them sometime," Éponine continued, shrugging off her robe. Her nightgown was modest in cut and length, but the material was sheer enough to hint at the curves underneath.

He looked away. "I closed that door a long time ago." His father had actually been the one to do the closing, with dramatic roars of "I have no son!" that would have been funny if they hadn't been so, so meant.

She slipped into her side of the bed, and something about the way the candlelight caught her face made him wonder out loud, "Do you miss your family?"

"Gavroche was the closest thing I had," she whispered.

He heard the words she didn't say: _He died at your barricade._

They didn't speak any more that evening. He eased himself into the bed and she automatically turned to the wall, keeping as wide a space between them as the small mattress would allow. He blew out the candle, and their little house was plunged into darkness and silence.

* * *

**IV.**

**No, not like this, when I have not seen you without your skin on, when I know nothing, when I am not safe. Not you, whose name all my nightmares know.**

"_How did you survive the war?"_

"_You left me for dead. I still haven't forgiven you for that, by the way."_

* * *

It was August in Provence. The sky was the clear and brilliant shade of blue that made young men feel immortal, and this filled Enjolras with a vague sense of trepidation. He avoided looking at the horizon over the lush green vineyards, because it was so endless that it made him feel like he was never going to die. Out of this refusal to be distracted, he blazed through his work and would invariably be done before dusk. Meanwhile, Éponine usually closed up the bookshop, and she came home in the evenings smelling of vellum and dried lavender.

It was during this hot, dry season that his body began to develop the annoying tendency to gravitate towards hers in bed. She would poke him awake in the middle of the night, complaining about the warmth of his arm wrapped around her waist, or his leg slung over her thighs. He would grumpily roll away, covered in sweat, and in the mornings he was often in need of an ice-cold bath, his brain fogged with the memory of her skin and her husky voice.

"_Apollo lives!" _Enjolras would imagine Jehan declaring in satisfaction. _"The boy is not a marble statue, after all!"_

This line of thought would sober him, and his blood would cool into nothingness. Dead, they were all dead.

"How did you break your arm, anyway?" Éponine asked him as she disposed of the last of the slings once he was fully healed.

"I can't remember," he replied.

Perhaps part of him was sorry to see the slings go, because she'd taken to doing up his buttons or unfastening them, and sometimes her fingers grazed his chest or his sides and touched off hidden chords within him, but, on the whole, he was relieved, because she was younger than he was and it made him feel like a lecher.

But the summer sun tanned her skin and brought out her freckles and the brown in her hair. Three square meals a day softened her sharp angles, added roundness to cheeks that had once been gaunt and hollow. Her back straightened and she carried herself much taller these days. She bloomed with the Provencal wildflowers; she was now more woman than girl.

Enjolras didn't know whether to decry these changes, or to welcome them. She seemed so much happier now, even as he descended further into the chambers of ennui. He supposed it had been a good deed on his part to take her away from the gutters of Paris, but she was a living reminder of the passage of time. She would hum to herself as she haphazardly organized the cupboards; she would forget herself enough to start skipping down the grassy paths, and it would strike him, so sharply that he almost winced, that life was continuing on after his revolution. They were growing older, but his friends and her brother would always stay the same.

"_The most important rule of battle," says Courfeyrac, his eyes shining and his smile bright, batting away the tricolor as it grazes his face in a vivid ripple of wind and cloth, "is that no one gets left behind."_

"But you did it," Enjolras said out loud. He'd been on his way home when that memory set in. The sun sank over the green and purple vineyards, and the sky deepened into azure. "All of you. You left me."

* * *

It was nearly eight in the evening and she still hadn't returned home from work. He took to pacing the floor, straining his ears for the sound of her footsteps, even though he knew it was in vain; Éponine always moved more quietly at night, by habit and instinct.

_When did you know that about her? _he asked himself, frowning. _When did you start to worry? When did you get used to this?_

After several more minutes passed, a frustrated breath escaped his lips. He donned his coat and grabbed the oil lamp on his way out the door, and in doing so he almost ran into her as she made to enter the house.

"Hello." She blinked at him. "Where are you going?"

He grasped at the first excuse that came to mind. "Out for a walk."

"At this time of night?"

"Yes. Is there a problem?"

He was a bad liar, and they both knew it. She bit her lip to hide her grin. For a while they just stood there on the front stoop of their house with him holding the lamp above their heads, veiling her face in gold while his remained covered in shadow. The air was full of starlight and the mossy hum of insect wings and the snow-white waves of Candeveau's orchids as they stirred in the balmy Mediterranean breeze.

"We got a new shipment of books today, so I had to sort them," she said at last. "And then Monsieur Anouilh insisted on buying me dinner because I worked overtime."

All Enjolras knew about Éponine's boss was that he was a bachelor in his early thirties, but he found himself unable to think highly of a man who would keep someone else's… non-wife from coming home at a rational hour. "It is dangerous for a girl to travel the roads alone at this time-"

"Oh, Monsieur Anouilh offered to escort me, but I told him I could manage," she blithely interrupted. "It's only a short distance, and I can see very well in the dark, as you know."

"From now on, _I _will escort you." The words came out stiff and clipped. "I will pick you up after your shift, and we will walk home together."

She tilted her head, regarding him with eyes darker than ink-stains. He tried to keep his features impassive, because he did not want her pity or her condescension, but whatever she saw on his face made her nod thoughtfully, her gaze never dropping from his.

"All right," she said.

* * *

_The first time Thénardier hits her after the revolution, Éponine hits back. She rounds on him in a whirl of sharp fingernails and knees, and doesn't stop even when he's hunkered down on the floor, shielding his scratched face and crying for mercy. Her mother tries to pry her loose, but Éponine uses her elbows to break the grip, possessed by some unnatural strength, and grabs a chair and slams it down on her father's bent back. Her cheek is still smarting from his punch, which had also knocked out another one of her teeth, and as her tongue pokes the new empty space, she is seized by unbelievable fury because it's yet another thing that has been taken away from her._

"_I survived the barricade!" she screams at her cowering parents. "I will survive _you!"

_She leaves for good, their curses still ringing in her ears. She has no idea where she's going, but her heart and her feet are light with what feels like freedom, and she's walking so fast that, when she turns the corner, she has to bring herself up short to stop from crashing into Monsieur Enjolras._

_She takes in his black coat, his boots, the valise in his uninjured hand. "You're leaving?" she asks, stupidly because of course he is- she'd been the one who told him he had to go- but she's also unexpectedly sad, because after his departure she will be the only living soul in Paris who had been at the Rue de la Chanvevrie on _that _day._

"_I am going to Provence," he tells her, and, although she's never been there, the name has a lovely lilt to it. His glance flickers the bruise on her cheek, and in that moment she comes to a decision._

"_Need company?" Éponine asks, grinning even though her fingernails are ragged and one side of her face is still sore._

* * *

**To Be Concluded**


	2. Part Two

**Notes: **Thank you so much for all the feedback and support! I recognize some familiar names in the review section, you know who you are, HI GUYS! I forgot to mention that this fic, unlike my previous works, is more heavily based on the movie, although not completely, as you will see. Once again, if you would like to read stories that I haven't published on this site, or see graphics that the flawless Tumblr people have made for my stories, you can check out my blog ( youarethesentinels . tumblr . c*m / tagged / you-are-my-revolution ). Okay, so we've reached the end now. Corrections, suggestions, and constructive criticism are very much welcome, as always. Thanks for being amazing readers. I hope to see you all again soon!

* * *

**Part Two**

* * *

**V.**

**That's how you get deathless, volchitsa. Walk the same tale over and over, until you wear a groove in the world, until even if you vanished, the tale would keep turning, keep playing, like a phonograph, and you'd have to get up again, even with a bullet through your eye, to play your part and say your lines.**

"_How did you survive the war?"_

"_The National Guard ran out of ammunition."_

"_Really?"_

"_No. Not really."_

* * *

In the pub, some village girls were tittering and whispering excitedly among themselves. A few tables over, Candeveau and his wife followed their collective gaze at something beyond the windows. Across the street, Enjolras was standing outside the bookshop, fiddling impatiently with his gloves as he stared off into space, his profile cutting a fine, sharp line in the dusk.

"The boy is too handsome for his own good," said Madame Candeveau, shaking her head. "But at least he's loyal."

"What makes you say that?" asked Candeveau with interest. As a peaceful man by nature, he was glad that his spouse had revised her initial unflattering opinion of their next-door neighbors.

"I've never met a lad so uninterested in women he isn't married to. He dotes on Éponine."

"He does?" Enjolras didn't really strike Candeveau as the doting type.

Madame Candeveau gave him the look that meant he was being frustratingly obtuse. "As far as I can tell, he's picked her up from work every day for the past month and a half. That's real dedication."

"Perhaps," conceded the old man, although he privately thought that Enjolras didn't act like someone who was in love. His expression was always stern around his young wife, just short of agitated; his speech was curt, and he had a habit of looking at anything but her. For her part, Éponine didn't seem to be particularly fond of her husband, either. She jumped at any excuse to argue and tease and she treated him with a vague exasperation that seemed a little too platonic. They never touched except by accident, and their eyes never softened in each other's presence.

_Such _an odd pair.

"There she goes, the little dear," cooed Madame Candeveau.

Éponine came flying out of the bookshop, the door swinging shut behind her. She smirked at Enjolras and he nodded. They set off together, to groans of dismay from the table of village girls.

Through the foggy glass, Candeveau watched the young couple walk through the fading, syrupy light of Indian summer. Their shoulders brushed and Enjolras automatically moved to the left, widening the distance between them. Noticing this, Éponine playfully grabbed his arm and snuggled into his side for a few seconds, before waltzing away with a devilish snicker. A muscle ticked along the boy's jaw as he frowned in irritation, but his blue eyes filled with a strange darkness and, whether he was conscious of his actions or not, the next steps he took brought him closer to her orbit until, just before they disappeared from Candeveau's sight, his shoulder was once again just centimeters apart from hers.

The old man was not so old that he had forgotten youth and yearning, and how bitter-sweetly they could collide. _Yes, _he thought to himself, _perhaps they're a little bit in love, after all._

* * *

Éponine was sorry to see the last of the lavender go, but not even Indian summer could be eternal. The turn of the seasons set the greens and purples on fire, and the world blazed red and gold. Truffles started popping up in the markets and in the gift baskets from the Candeveaus, and the air began to smell of damp leaves and crushed grapes. It got colder in the evenings, so she stopped complaining whenever Enjolras nestled against her in his sleep; he was surprisingly warm for a marble statue.

Autumn was the season of memory, and with it came dreams. Hers were simple and quiet: the alleys of Paris, her father's hearth songs in Montfermeil, Azelma playing with headless dolls, a child who might have been Gavroche, although his back was always turned. These scenes were mundane, and yet they felt so real that she often woke up disoriented, surprised to find herself in a house where the wind didn't whistle through the cracks, in a comfortable bed with soft pillows, and alone except for the boy beside her.

His dreams were worse. His movements at night grew restless, agitated. He talked in his sleep, in a jumble of French and Latin- it figured that Enjolras would dream in Latin. Éponine had been out cold for most of the rebellion, but she learned bits and pieces of it in the darkness. Sometimes he called his friends' names. Sometimes he begged someone to open the door. Sometimes he murmured, "Wait for me."

And, only half-awake, he would reach for her, all of his walls falling down, burying his face in her hair, his breath skimming over her neck. Sometimes she would feel hot tears on her skin, but they never talked about it in the morning.

Her lack of curiosity surprised her at first, but then she decided it was natural. She was Éponine Thénardier and she'd had enough of the war. The only thing that really intrigued her at this point was how he had made it through, and she wasn't even sure if she wanted to know. She was done carrying the burden of someone else's life.

* * *

Her cooking failed to improve, but he was pulling longer and more stressful hours at the vineyard because it was harvest season, so he was usually ravenous enough to choke down the salt and the sog without tasting it, although he would feel something inside him shriveling after every bite. At work, he was polite but aloof; none of the other men had Grantaire's humor or Combeferre's depth. It seemed awkward and strange to seek out camaraderie that wasn't Les Amis. There was an afternoon when one of his fellow clerks complained about a draft, and Enjolras had to fight back a shiver because he remembered Joly.

The end of the year made men review it. One day, his head bent over the ledgers, he overheard a group of coworkers talking about the June rebellion.

"Young boys. University students. Didn't like France the way it was."

"They were bourgeoisie, weren't they? What was so wrong with _their _France?"

"You know kids. Prank gone wrong, if you ask me."

"All of them died, didn't they?"

"Heard from my cousin in Paris that one of them survived, but I'm not sure…"

"Lucky bastard."

_Feuilly wasn't a student, _Enjolras wanted to shout at them. _And Bossuet never pranked anyone because he was afraid it would backfire on him. It wasn't like that. You don't know how long we planned, how hard we worked. It wasn't like that. You don't know. You weren't there. You don't get to talk about it._

But the time for grand and righteous speech was over. He'd left all that behind, along with the corpses and the ruins of the barricade. He pressed his lips tightly together and continued balancing the ledgers.

* * *

Enjolras was in a black mood when he fetched Éponine at the bookshop. He arrived a little late; she was already out the door and untying the bonnet she removed after every shift. His stormy gaze fell on her and she stilled, like a bird poised to take flight.

"What's wrong? I haven't seen that look since-" She stopped, her eyes widening once she realized what she had been about to say. "Never mind."

_Since June, _his thoughts finished for her. _Since the revolution. Say it. Say I killed your brother. Say I failed, say I made a mistake. _But the anger that had driven him in another life now only left him feeling exhausted. They walked home in silence. The autumn dusk fell over the road like leaves.

* * *

**VI.**

**No one is now what they were before the war. There's just no getting any of it back.**

"_How did you survive the war?"_

"_For a while, I was out of my body. I could see all of you standing around me. I saw you crying. Did you, really? Did you cry?"_

"_Perhaps."_

* * *

Madame Candeveau took to bringing Éponine with her to the market. The old woman was astonished by how skillfully the girl haggled down the prices of meat and cheese, charming the vendors, cajoling, pretending to walk away.

"You act like you've been conning people all your life," Madame Candeveau remarked after yet another successful shopping spree.

"No," said Éponine. "Not all my life."

It was lunchtime on a Sunday, so the pub was full of villagers enjoying their day off, but Madame Candeveau spotted a distinctive flash of blond hair; the men had made themselves useful, after all. She and Éponine joined their respective husbands at the corner table and Éponine gaily waved her basket under Enjolras' nose.

"I got that sweet chevre you like," she announced.

"No, that's the one you like," he replied, without having to peer into the basket.

Madame Candeveau had to bite back a grin. It reminded her so much of her and her husband during the early days, this settling into a pattern that was so mysterious to everyone else. As they ate lunch, the old woman also couldn't help noticing the bags under Enjolras' eyes and how quiet he was. The boy looked like he already had one foot in the land of the dead. She wondered what exactly happened in Paris. Their neighbors could sometimes have this very distant expression on their faces, like they weren't seeing the thatched houses or the sprawling fields, but, rather, something else.

At the next table, a man stood too quickly and upset the mugs. There was the sound of shattering, of surprised cries.

Enjolras ducked. His forehead slammed into Éponine's. The Candeveaus stared at the young couple as they straightened up and collected themselves. The girl appeared only slightly disgruntled, but the boy looked haunted.

"My apologies," he muttered to her. "Are you all right?"

"Are _you?" _she shot back.

"I need air." He stood up, nodded at the Candeveaus, and left the pub.

The old woman reached out to pat the girl's hand. "Don't fret, dear. Men can be so very strange sometimes."

"He was always strange." Éponine was usually guarded about her past, but there it was again, that far-off look. "Even in the time before. All those ideas. I couldn't… It surprised me a lot, how strange he could be."

* * *

She'd lost her appetite, so she went to join him outside. He was pacing, hands folded behind his back, but he came to a stop in front of her.

"What did you know about them?" he demanded, white-faced and tense-lipped. "My- my friends. Tell me what you know. Tell me who they were to you."

This was the closest he'd come to acknowledging what little past they shared, those nights when she'd snuck into the Musain for warmth and Monsieur Marius' presence and witnessed many a political discussion, witnessed the plans for rebellion starting to unfold. "Bossuet was the bald one. Bahorel was witty," she replied in soft and cautious tones. "Combeferre liked to quote philosophers. Feuilly made beautiful fans." She'd learned it from her parents, how to be good with names and faces, how to remember things about people, and they were all around her now, those young men, laughing in the firelight, coming back to life in the dirt paths and the clear air of southern France. "Grantaire was always drinking. Courfeyrac was the kindest, and he was nice to Gavroche. You all were." Enjolras' eyes flickered shut, as if he were letting her voice wash over him, pulling him out of hell- or dragging him deeper into it. "Jehan wrote poetry. Joly once got a papercut and nearly chopped off his thumb because he was scared of getting gangrene." These were the shallow things, she knew that, but she'd merely been a casual observer, the shadow, the girl dressed in boys' clothes. "One night, Grantaire sobered up enough to ask why you had to die, and it felt like he was talking to you alone, and you told him-"

"_Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori," _Enjolras murmured, almost feverish. "Yes. I remember that. R never- he never believed as much as I did-"

"But he would have followed you until the end," said Éponine.

"He would have. He did." Enjolras shivered. "And yet, he didn't follow me back out."

_You weren't meant to make it, _she thought. _May God forgive me, but we both know you should have died with them, at the barricade. What happened? Tell me how you broke your arm. Tell me-_

It was cold. She wrapped her shawl tighter around herself. "Let's go back inside."

* * *

"_It's sweeter to live, isn't it?" Grantaire asks._

"_Only in freedom," retorts Enjolras._

"_Ah, yes." Sobriety doesn't suit Grantaire. He is paler, sadder. "You and your freedom."_

* * *

**VII.**

**I do not tolerate a world emptied of you. I have tried. For a year I have called every black tree; I have looked for your face in the patterns of the ice. In the dark, I have pored over the loss of you like pale gold.**

"_How did you survive the war?"_

"_The people stirred. They joined the fight. They opened their doors and let us in."_

"_I think you're dreaming."_

"_That's what I do best."_

* * *

It snowed that winter; nothing heavy, just a light sheen of ice and whiteness, the lakes and streams barely crystallized, but this was Provence and so everyone thought it was the end of the world.

Enjolras couldn't help a sardonic smirk at these proclamations. They didn't know, of course. The world had ended in summer, in the June heat.

But because they had no fireplace, he and Éponine froze in their house at night. She abandoned all pretenses and practically burrowed into him, her arms around his neck, her chest pressed against his side, her long hair draped over his stomach with its scent of vellum and ink. And it was warm, but also dreadfully inconvenient, because he would wake up with his palm sliding up her nightgown, over her thigh, his nose at her collarbone, his blood rushing and his body screaming for release.

_Madness, _he would think hazily as he untangled himself from her. _Mistress._

The cold leeched into his bones and he got sick. She took time off from work and stayed at his bedside, spooning broth and tea into his mouth. It was the worst thing. He was flushed and he could barely breathe and he was going to die.

"Honestly!" she snapped after he told her this, moaned it through a clogged nose and a parched mouth. "It's not that bad. You'll be fine."

The first time she sneezed, she looked like she was going to rip his throat out.

Madame Candeveau dropped by in the afternoons to nurse them and keep their house, clucking her tongue as they scowled at each other in bed.

"You silly kids," she would say with fondness while they struggled weakly for a bigger share of the covers, coughing and sneezing.

He got better first. It was his turn to tuck the blankets around her, to feed her. This was the time when she started dreaming about Marius, whispering the boy's name in her sleep.

It hurt, and Enjolras had no idea why.

"Did you love him?" he asked one night, after she'd tossed and turned so much that he had no choice but to wake her up.

"I loved the idea of him," she said hoarsely, huddled under the covers, her voice blowing through his veins like smoke. "He was gentle. His was the first gentle face I'd seen in years, and, for a while, that was enough. But…" She coughed, and he automatically held a kerchief to her mouth. "But that bullet nearly killed me," she continued through the silk, her fingers circled around his wrist. "I woke up, and the street was covered in blood and splinters and glass, and I thought you were all dead. I couldn't find his body, and then I decided not to look for it anymore. Does that sound cruel?"

He shrugged. He, too, had done cruel things.

"I survived," she rasped, wrapping her arms around herself, in a world of snow and wood and glass and candlelight. "I thought I loved him, but I survived, and I was done fighting for scraps. I _survived." _She repeated those words fiercely, like they were all she had. "I survived, and it was time to live."

* * *

_They ignore each other for most of the carriage ride. She looks out the window and he stares at the tattered hem of her skirt. He wonders if he's sentenced himself to a life of silence, and if perhaps it's for the best, if perhaps the apocalypse had passed him by and now he's blinking in the dawn of a new world where only stillness has lease._

_As the carriage sways over the roads, he catches her glancing at him from time to time. He can tell she's bursting with questions: _How did you break your arm? How did you survive? Why did you take me with you? Did anyone else make it?

_When she finally speaks, the words are not what he's been expecting. "You should probably start calling me Éponine," she says, wriggling her fingers, the cheap wedding ring catching the glow of the sun._

"_It would be a pleasant change from calling you the shadow," he replies noncommittally._

_She smiles, and it's almost pretty, despite the yellowing bruise on her cheek and the gaps in her teeth. Her eyes are like splotches of ink shot through with golden flecks that almost look like bits of firelight if he squints. Yes. Ink and firelight. Words in old Latin. Wine on his tongue and dreams in his head._

"_I," she says, "will no longer be shadow."_

We shall see, _he thinks. Optimism now feels foreign to him._

_She stares out the window once more. This time, he follows her gaze. Patches of blue sky peek through the gaps in the leaves, their starry edges scintillated with rays of summer light, dappling the Earth in green and gold. The wheels tilt and creak, and Enjolras imagines he is falling._

* * *

"How's the stew?" Éponine asked him when she'd recuperated enough to start cooking again.

"Good," he lied. He could barely swallow it, as it seemed to consist primarily of salt and water. He'd once gathered the courage to request her not to make bouillabaisse anymore, because it was a dish he'd always detested even before the advent of her subpar culinary skills into his life, and she'd agreed. He'd been bouillabaisse-free for more than a month. Surely she couldn't have forgotten…

But he had a sneaking suspicion she was doing this on purpose. She seemed to be watching him from the corner of her eye, waiting for something.

"I had a nice chat with Monsieur Anouilh the other day," she said in a cheerful tone. "He was discussing how much better things are now with Louis Philippe on the throne-"

A muscle ticked along Enjolras' jaw. Was she _really _going there?

"He said a republic was a failed system of government, and Lamarque, like all the Napoleonic generals, didn't know what he was-"

"Éponine." His tone was calm, yet implacable. "Have I offended you lately? Why are you trying to pick a fight?"

Something shifted behind her eyes, and her stance changed with it, became coiled, like she was about to strike, or to flee. "Maybe I'm bored."

He sighed. "Perhaps you should be _bored _somewhere else until you're not."

"Stop talking to me like I'm a child."

"You _are _a child," he lied again, for the second time that day. "Eat your bouillabaisse."

* * *

He did the dishes and she went out to the backyard, snow crunching under her boots with every step. The landscape was a panorama of white frost and gray sky, and part of her wanted to shout into this endlessness, to scream at the universe to return him to her, the furious and passionate schoolboy in Paris, who'd had an opinion about everything, who had burned with belief on a summer's day, who hadn't been a lonesome specter quietly eating awful food and saying nothing when she mended his white shirts with gaudy purple thread for the sole purpose of trying to get a rise out of him.

_Provincial life has made you soft, _she scolded herself. _You don't know how to con people anymore, Jondrette girl._

But maybe Enjolras was smarter than most. Maybe she wouldn't have been able to dupe him even in the time before. She was never going to know.

Éponine had put the revolution behind her, but she suddenly found herself wishing it was May again, May with the crackling hearth in the Musain and the vibrant voices and everyone still alive.

_Give it back to me, _she would have begged, if she hadn't promised herself that she would never beg for anything again, if she wasn't a girl standing in a land of snow and ice. _Give May back to me. Give me back our days._

* * *

**VIII.**

**For you alone I will be weak.**

"_How did you survive the war?"_

"_I don't know. I think, sometimes, you just have to live."_

* * *

The snows melted in January, but old man Candeveau came down with hay fever. Éponine spent most of her free time next door helping his wife, not returning home until very late. Enjolras discovered, much to his chagrin and disbelief, that he couldn't sleep well without her by his side. He crept into bed at his usual hour, resolutely telling himself that he did not require her presence, but he couldn't manage anything more than fitful dozes, and he always, always woke when the door creaked open, like his ears had been pricked for the sound. And when she slipped between the covers, his guard would always be down because he was exhausted and she was _back, _and he would clasp a tentative hand around her waist. Of course, he would have denied doing anything of the sort if she brought it up the next day, which she never did.

One night he might have even mumbled, "Hello" when she tucked herself into his arms.

And then, in the middle of this melting, rain-soaked season, Enjolras dreamed about doors. This time, he was on the other side of them. His friends were pounding on the wood, rattling the knob, begging him to let them in.

"Save us!" someone cried, someone sobbed, and he could no longer tell if it was Combeferre or Courfeyrac, he had forgotten the sound of their voices, the looks on their faces. "You promised glory. You promised a tomb of light. Not like this. _Please, _Enjolras. Not like this."

And he was screaming, raging at himself, commanding himself to open the door as he had commanded his boys to die, but in this dream he didn't, in this dream he heard the shots and then the silence, and the fading echoes of revolutionary songs.

"Enjolras." Someone was shaking him awake. Morning light was pouring in through the windows. "I had to stay the night at the Candeveaus, but the old man's fever finally broke. He'll be all right," Éponine was telling him, her lips moving, forming bows and arcs that filled his eyes like amber, dragging him out of the Rue de la Chanvevrie, dragging him away from the blood and the barricade. "You're having a bad dream. Wake up."

"The war…" he grated out.

"It's done. It's finished." She leaned in close, her hands on his shoulders, her hair trickling into the cradle of his arms, setting all his nerves on fire, the sun framing her face like a halo, her scent leaving him breathless. "The war is over."

"Then lead me out of it," he said, and reached for her.

_Make me forget._

* * *

"_Here's to pretty girls who went to our heads," murmurs Jehan, clinking his liquor bottle against Bahorel's._

_Joly grins. It's the last night of their lives, but Joly is the happiest among them, always will be. "Here's to witty girls who went to our beds!"_

"_I will miss them," says Jehan, who will be in tears tomorrow as he begs the people to let him in. "All the women I've loved. I am thankful everyday for the remembrance of them."_

* * *

Enjolras' hands tightened around Éponine's wrists. _Make me forget._

* * *

**IX.**

**What would I have been if I had never seen the birds? I am no one; I am nothing. I am a blank paper on which you and your magic wrote a girl. Just the kind of girl you wanted, all hungry and hurt and needing. Nothing in me was not made by you.**

"_How did you survive the war?"_

"_I wish I hadn't. You don't know how much I wish that."_

* * *

His mouth slammed over hers, hot and wet and desperate. She stepped back and he followed, standing up and moving with her until he had her pinned to the wall. His lips lowered, planting kisses along her jaw, and her fingers tangled into his golden hair. _Welcome back, boy on fire, let's live again, you and me. _His lean frame rocked insistently against hers, every movement sending sparks through her clothes, his hands slipping up her skirts, squeezing her thighs, her hips. His teeth dug into her neck and she felt like she was crawling out of her skin, knees buckling until he had to hold her up, hooking her legs around his waist. His lips returned to hers in a rough, feverish rhythm, and she was blindly undoing the buttons on his pants, and he was groaning into her mouth, and everything that had been curling inside her all these months was suddenly tense and still and eager, waiting to be unleashed-

And suddenly he broke away, staring at her with blue eyes darkened by lust and nightmares, his breath emerging in ragged gasps. Pain flickered across his features and she knew that she had lost him again.

He set her down gently and she leaned against the wall for support, her heart a loud hammer within her chest.

"I can't, I shouldn't…" He shook his head like he was shaking away her touch. "Not when they're…"

He trailed off, but he didn't have to say it. Dead, they were all dead.

Éponine slid to the floor, boneless and out of breath. Enjolras didn't look at her as he fixed his clothes.

"I am going for a walk," he announced to the walls.

Her head snapped up so she could glare at him, but he had already left.

* * *

**X.**

**You will always go into that tent. You will see her scar and wonder where she got it. You will always be amazed at how one woman can have so much black hair. You will always fall in love, and it will always be like having your throat cut, just that fast. You will always run away with her. You will always lose her. You will always be a fool. You will always be dead, in a city of ice, snow falling into your ear. You have already done all of this and will do it again.**

"_How did you survive the war?"_

"_I was walking down an alley. I was following someone. A child. A little boy. But before I could go into the light with him, he turned to face me. It was my brother. I was so startled to see him that I began to wake up. He waved goodbye, and I opened my eyes."_

* * *

"Oh, no, you don't!"

She was screaming, her voice cracking through the damp spring air as she stomped after him on the dirt path. Trees blurred at the edges of his vision, new green leaves and old black bark, the world made of dew stains and birdsong.

"You've never walked away from anything in your entire life!" Éponine yelled. "You don't get to walk away from _this!"_

He whirled around. Her hair was in disarray and the ribbons on her sleeves were loose, and their little house with its white picket fence loomed in the distance, surreal in all its ordinariness.

"What is _this, _exactly?" he retorted in nothing more than a hiss. "This is the life I shouldn't have had. This is the life my friends will never know. I don't deserve any of this." His hands were shaking. "I should never have come here. I shouldn't have brought you with me-"

Her dark eyes blazed. "Then why did you?" she demanded. "Did you need a playmate, a housemaid-"

"Because you were there!" he roared, his temper finally resurfacing after all these months, and, with it, all the grief, all the guilt. "You were there. You knew what it was like. You were part of it. And I-" His voice broke on a strangled sob. "And I wanted- to save some part of it-"

"Well, you have!" she burst out, crossing her arms, almost petulant. "You did! And now it's just us, Enjolras. Just you and me and all our ghosts. So now what are you going to do?"

When he didn't respond, she continued savagely, in harsh tones that brooked no mercy. "Someone saved you, didn't they? Someone protected you from the National Guard. That's the only way you could have lived, because you were all set to die."

"Enough," he said tersely, but she ignored him.

"I saw the look on your face when you marched off to Lamarque's funeral. I knew you knew you were going to die. Who was it, hmm? Who changed your destiny? Who haven't you forgiven for that?"

"_Enough, _Éponine."

She was no stranger to other people's pity, and, finally, she bestowed it on him. Her face softened. "Someone cared enough to not let you die. It didn't matter to them that you would hate them for it," she rasped. "Someday, you will make your peace with that."

She turned on her heel and went back to the house, disturbing a cluster of finches pecking at the ground. The birds took off, and, for a few moments, Enjolras could see only her retreating form and the flutter of jeweled wings.

* * *

"_It is not too late," he tells Les Amis at dawn, when it is already all too painfully clear that no one else will arrive to join their cause. "Leave me, and live."_

_The other boys glance at one another. Bahorel is the first one to break the silence. "Give us some credit, General," he snorts. "This is our fight, too."_

_Feuilly clasps Enjolras' arm. "I cannot imagine a better way to go," he says earnestly, "than with my brothers. I will stay with you until the end."_

_It all comes back to Enjolras in a rush, the first time he met each and every one of them, the individual moments he'd looked over at each one and realized this person had traversed the line from acquaintance to friend. All these years, and he isn't sure which one likes the color blue, or which one can't sleep without the light on. He should have known them more, he should have been better._

_Too late, too late for any of that._

_Time passes, too short a time, not enough time. He approaches Grantaire, who's leaning against the rampart, taking generous swigs of brandy._

"_Why are you still here?" Enjolras asks Graintaire softly. "You do not believe in any of this."_

_The other boy won't quite meet his eyes. "You'll see," he slurs in a hollow tone. "Before this is over, you will see what I believe in. I promise."_

* * *

Enjolras walked past the village, past the vineyards, his steps aimless. He felt like he was drifting half-asleep under an open sky.

It started to drizzle. He stopped, and a silver sheen veiled the world. It had also rained when she died, or when he thought she died. At the time, he'd considered it fitting that a cold and miserable existence such as hers would end in water.

A carriage came thundering through the mists, its driver frantically trying to rein in a panicked horse. Enjolras could only stare at the spectacle bearing down upon him in mute surprise, or perhaps resignation. Yes, this could be his end, run over by wheels and trampled by hooves along a dirt road in southern France. Ignoble and foolish, but an end, nonetheless.

_Combeferre._ The name pierced him just as he smelled wet animal hide and worn leather. _Combeferre was the one who liked blue._

Enjolras dove out of the runaway carriage's path. He hit the moist soil and rolled onto his back. Rain dripped into his eyes, turning the sky and treetops silver.

"_Apollo in the Mud," _Feuilly would have remarked. _"A fascinating and inventive twist on classical expressionism. _Revolutionary, _one might say."_

Enjolras started to laugh. It was new and strange, this bursting in his lungs, this heaving of his shoulders. He laughed until he wept.

* * *

_He is alone now, his friends dead at his feet, the soldiers backing him up against the window. Blood and sweat trickle down his face. His fight is almost done._

_Grantaire staggers up the stairs, shoving his way through the army, taking his place beside Enjolras. He reeks of liquor and smoke._

"_Do you permit it?" he asks, looking into Enjolras' eyes as their would-be executioners take aim. And in that gaze is all of history, all the arguments, all the quiet moments, all the memories of schoolboys growing up to become men. _I believe in one thing, _that gaze seems to say, _and that's you. It's always been you. Do you permit it? Will you let me have this?

Yes, _Enjolras thinks, gripping the red flag tightly. _Dying with you, I can do that. _He takes Grantaire's hand with his free one. He smiles._

_Grantaire smiles back. Wide and warm, his ragged features suffused with the sun's glow. "Oh, good," he says in relief. "This makes it so much easier. The awning will break your fall. Run once you hit the ground."_

_Before Enjolras can process these words, Grantaire grabs him by the shoulders, and, with all his strength, shoves him out the window, just as the world explodes into gunfire._

* * *

Out in the backyard, Éponine sat down on the ground. She'd just pulled this skirt from a pile of fresh laundry, but she couldn't bring herself to care. It was Enjolras' turn to do the next wash, anyway.

The drizzle had stopped, leaving the grass wet and the geraniums coated in dew. The air smelled fresh and clean, although shot through with a temperate breeze that carried the tang of salt from the Mediterranean. She decided she would visit the seaside soon.

Her hands dug into the earth as she stared at the indigo mountains in the distance, unconsciously tugging at blades of grass, rubbing roots and soil between her palms, staining her flesh green and brown. She remembered the carriage ride into the village, how the world beyond the windows had all of a sudden opened up into sky and light, how her breath had caught with the promise of new things.

The war wasn't over. She realized that now. She and Enjolras had carried it with them. He flinched at loud noises, and she thought about ghosts.

Soft footsteps came up from behind her. She turned her head, and her eyes almost popped out. "What happened to you?" she asked incredulously, because he was covered in mud.

"You," he muttered without rancor, with something in his tone that made her blink. "You make things happen to me."

It was the closest to an apology he was ever going to give her, but Éponine Thénardier was an expert in the art of taking what she could get. She moved aside to make space for him, and he sat down beside her, joining her in the dirt.

He took a deep breath, but she interrupted him before he could speak.

"Don't say anything for now," she told him. "Don't say anything. Maybe it will be all right."

They fell into a tentative silence, broken only by the sound of the birds. Éponine tilted her face to the heavens and closed her eyes, letting the sun thrum against her shut lids, letting slivers of light trickle into the edges of darkness. She felt Enjolras stirring beside her. His fingers brushed against her knee.

* * *

**XI.**

**A war story is a black space. On the one side is before and on the other side is after, and what is inside belongs only to the dead.**

"_Somebody loved me. That is how I survived the war."_

* * *

**The End**


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